What happened in a Rockville, Maryland high school last week relates to one of the questions I have spent years trying to answer: “What went wrong with America?” You see, what happened in Rockville is happening every day under different sets of circumstances all across America, and as I noticed, at an increasing rate as time passes.
How could the education of anyone, illegal alien or citizen, be of more importance than the safety of children? Absurd? Of course it is, but that is exactly what set the stage for the rape of a young girl. The Rockville school district placed two older boys of college age, who by law are adults, in a high school with much younger children because the boys couldn’t speak English. I think the theory was based on the difficulty of learning in an atmosphere with people of their own ages, inasmuch as the older people are much more advanced than high school kids.
I’ll repeat, the Rockville school system chose between the safety of children and a person’s right to an education. In other words, some “intelligent” adult(s) put on the side, or completely discounted the potential sexual attraction these young men might have while living in an atmosphere with younger girls many hours each day, five days a week. I submit, whoever made that decision, an intelligent adult(s), has not only lost touch with reality, that person(s) has a mind that is morally deficient, and should instantly be permanently removed from the Rockville school system. You see, whoever made that decision should have known the danger, and because the first obligation of every official of every school system is to protect every student, I submit, whoever made that decision is directly responsible for what happened to that young girl.
So the question is, how could any intelligent, well-educated individual or people make such a decision? I ask this question because, as I said, decisions like this have been happening at an increasing pace all across America, and in fact, I myself have been the victim of such thoughtless thinking twice in just this past year alone.
As I sit here and write, the City of New York is building a homeless shelter right next door to a shopping center I own, and adjacent to my shopping center, within 150’ from the shelter, is a New York City public high school with over a thousand teenage students. All of whom will be in the line of sight of as much as 175 homeless men, five days a week.
Now my second problem: Last summer, my “new” neighbor decided to build a fence along our shared boundary line, which runs parallel with my 300 foot-long driveway and separating the two is a mere five feet. Both of our homes are part of a subdivision of forty homes, and not one other home in the entire subdivision has a fence along a shared boundary line. When I confronted my new neighbor about his fence, his answer, “I own this property, it’s my right as a property owner.” My response to him was, “Yes, I understand that, but you also have a neighbor to live next to.” It didn’t matter to him. While these are all completely different circumstances and of varying levels of danger, what they do have in common is that with my neighbor, the Rockville Board of Education, and the City of New York, all three decisions discounted the impact of their decisions on the others involved. Each decision is best described by this phrase, “It’s all about me.” So the question is, how is it that so many people today are so self-centered that they won’t even consider “the other guy,” or just won’t let their minds go a bit further to see who else might be affected by a decision? How’d that happen? What happened to the golden rule? Why is it different today? What happened to respect for others?
So “what went wrong with America,” or “how did such a high percentage of people become so self-serving? I submit, America is broken because of the failure to consider the consequences of one’s actions on other people, which in effect is the composition of a family, and the composition of a neighborhood, and the composition of a government, and the composition of a country, America. So the question is, why is it today, other people are so easily discounted when an individual makes a decision? Why is the percentage of thoughtless, or self-serving people today so high? What caused so many Americans to guide their lives through such a narrowed perspective of the world? A perspective that is based on “myself.” This is the question that had to be answered, or put another way, what is it about the American way of life that causes tunnel vision, that establishes such selfishness, greed, a lack of respect, an attention deficit that refuses to see the consequences of one’s thoughts and actions on other people? Why is it that today, the percentage of people who think this way is so high? What went wrong with America? Sure, there were always selfish people, there were always people behaving badly, but something always kept the percentage at a low enough level so as not to so adversely affect the future of America. Today, disrespect for others is running rampant.
I found the answer to my questions in the most fundamental message of America, because it has not been delivered to the American public correctly. WE ARE A NATION OF PEOPLE THAT HAVE BEEN TOLD BY AMERICA’S LEADERS THROUGHOUT OUR LIFETIMES, AND OUR PARENTS AND GRANDPARENTS LIFETIMES, THAT THE PATHWAY TOWARD FULFILLING OUR DREAMS IS THROUGH OUR INDIVIDUAL FREEDOM, OUR INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS AS HUMAN BEINGS AS GUARANTEED BY THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES, AND AS STATED IN THE BILL OF RIGHTS. AMERICA’S MESSAGE, THEREFORE, IS INHERENTLY FLAWED, IT IS BUILT ON A VERY NARROWED PERSPECTIVE OF BOTH THE WORLD AND THE STORY OF LIFE AS DEFINED BY NATURE. THE WAY THE MESSAGE IS DELIVERED STATES THAT LIFE’S JOURNEY IS “ALL ABOUT ME.” But life’s journey is never only about me, and herein lies America’s main problem.
I submit, that for every time you’ve heard a president of our country, as well as any of our political leaders, talk about how precious life is, how precious family is, how precious America is, you’ve heard a thousand messages about how precious an individual’s freedom is, and how precious an individual’s rights are, and how precious equality is. In other words, drilled into the minds of tens of millions of Americans is the idea that “I am what matters most,” or, “I can do what I want, it’s a free country,” and to me, that is a big problem, because to live as part of a society, if there is to be any chance of achieving lasting peace, that idea can’t work. PEACE REQUIRES MUTUAL RESPECT, AND THAT NECESSARILY MEANS A PERSON CANNOT BE FREE TO DO WHATEVER HE OR SHE WANTS. The point is, delivered incorrectly, while America’s message had the power to lead America to the heights of economic, technological, and scientific greatness, and a better quality of life for so many more people, hiding in the background, America’s message also had the power to destroy people’s lives, and to destroy America, both through the moral breakdown that eventually results from truly believing the message, “that I am entitled to my rights, my freedoms.” America is falling due to the public hearing the wrong message from our leaders over and over again, a message that rarely ever is based on the truth. If living in peace is the goal of each of us, if achieving peace in the world is America’s goal as a nation, I submit, the way the message has been written in the Constitution, and delivered by America’s leaders throughout America’s history, most of us, America, and the world will all fail.
The Constitution of the United States, the guiding light of American law, thus the guiding light of our people from generation to generation, by the way it was written, left out any mention of the very subjects that determine a moral way of life, which happens to be the pathway to achieving a “more perfect union.” Why do I say that? Because the Constitution is silent when it comes to the relevance of life, family and country (America) relative to a person’s freedom. As such, the meaning and purpose of freedom is misunderstood. Freedom is placed on the highest pedestal, on the tiptop of the highest mountain in terms of the goal of America. Yet, the truth is, freedom is no more than a tool to serve life. Yes, freedom is indeed the pathway that leads to a higher quality of life, but it fails as an idea that can lead to a peaceful, meaningful life.
Absent of life, family and country, freedom has no value, but with life, family and country freedom derives everlasting value, and so, the values which establish freedom’s worth are missing in the Constitution, which is exactly why freedom has run rampant all through modern day America.
If there is no reference to the worth of life in the Constitution, than an individual’s freedom will seem of higher value (Roe v Wade). If there is no reference to the meaning and purpose of family in the Constitution, than an individual’s freedom will seem of higher value (thus a divorce rate which climbed to 50%), and if there is no reference to America’s value as an idea, as protector of life and freedom, than freedom will again seem of higher worth (the reason burning the American flag is so misguided, and why a global society matters more than America). As such, the future was inevitable by virtue of the way America’s message was delivered. Reduced to mere assumptions, the moral values established through the worth of life, and taught and protected through family life, the most treasured of all gifts, and America, our beloved country, are all absent from America’s message, all taken for granted, and therefore, destined to be diminished in terms of relevance. Thus, reduced in value by virtue of assumption, this eventually gave rise to a new America–the America of today, a society that is no longer built on family, no longer built on the relevance of America, but instead, today, a great percentage of American’s focus of attention is on just one person, “me,” and the future built on a global society. Today, for way too many Americans, little else matters other than oneself, and for sure that is a morally bankrupt individual. You see, moral values are only necessary in a world with other people, but if no one else matters but me, moral values, if known, will eventually be lost. With an assumption, taken for granted, awareness is gone, and out of sight out of mind. Without a moral standard, if “I only matter,” if life, family, and country no longer matter, morality will fall, and society inevitably collapses. I submit, herein lies the source of deep division in American society.
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